On its Broadway debut in 1968, Arthur Miller’s play was dubbed by one critic “a museum piece”. If it is, it has stood the test of time and now emerges, in Jonathan Church’s superbly acted production with David Suchet in the show-stealing role of an old furniture-dealer, as one of Miller’s best plays: an exploration of our need for sustaining illusions because, as he himself wrote, the truth is too terrible to face.

As in an Ibsen play, much of the real action has happened in the past. What we now see are two long-estranged brothers meeting to divide the family’s possessions. Victor, married to an alcohol-dependent wife, is a New York cop who sacrificed his studies to look after a dad ruined by the Great Depression. Walter is the brother who got out to enjoy a successful career as a wealthy surgeon. Surrounded by a mountain of mementoes, nicely realised in Simon Higlett’s design, the sibling reunion is fraught with resentment but also shows the two men have been playing self-assigned roles. As Walter says, in a line that seems to express Miller’s meaning: “We invent ourselves, Vic, to wipe out what we know.” The character who is closest to reality is the 89-year-old second-hand dealer Gregory Solomon: a blissfully comic creation who, at first, appears to have wandered in from a Neil Simon play, but who is well aware this is his last chance to defy time.

Suchet’s glowing performance is also filled with memorable detail. He smooths out a wrinkled business card that seems as old as himself, does a little jig in front of a mirror to suggest the character’s vaudevillian past and counts out $100 bills with the crisp flick of a bank cashier. Above all, in revealing an awareness of life’s ultimate absurdity, Suchet evokes the wisdom of Solomon.

The brothers are excellently played. Brendan Coyle as Victor not only has the right rugged solidity but rejoices in his self-imposed martyrdom. Adrian Lukis perfectly captures the guilt, insecurity and fear that lie beneath Walter’s velvet-collared affluence. Even if Victor’s wife, Esther, is the least rewarding role, Sara Stewart invests her with a quiet desperation. But what finally makes the play moving is Miller’s honesty in recognising that we are all, to a large extent, the authors of our own lives.